


whither thou goest

by schweet_heart



Series: Merlin Fic [63]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Angst, Arthurian, Bittersweet Ending, Canon Compliant, Canon Era, Emotional Infidelity, Hurt/Comfort, Love Triangles, M/M, Missing Persons, Missing in Action, Mythology - Freeform, Unhappy Ending, Unrequited Love, arthurian legends, mistaken for dead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-20
Updated: 2017-06-20
Packaged: 2018-11-14 09:00:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11204739
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schweet_heart/pseuds/schweet_heart
Summary: He has never thought of himself as the sort of man who could marry one person when he loved another, but then, Arthur has been blind to a lot of things in his life – this is just one more to add to the list.Or: Merlin goes missing. Arthur rides out to find him, and in so doing reveals some secrets he would rather not have uncovered.





	whither thou goest

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to **pelydryn77** for the beta. All remaining mistakes are my own.

 

 

 _He’s not defenceless_ , Arthur reminds himself. Merlin has proven more than once that he is, if nothing else, one of the luckiest men of Arthur’s acquaintance. The number of times he’s cheated death would be remarkable in a trained knight, let alone a manservant with no significant fighting skills that Arthur is aware of. _He’s going to be fine_.

 

The fact that Arthur believes this – because he can’t _not_ believe it, not believing it would be unacceptable – does not lessen the fact that he wants Merlin back, preferably now, preferably as unharmed and gormless as usual. He tells himself that he would feel this way about any of his men who were missing, yet he knows already that this is a lie. Merlin has never been just another servant, just another part of life in the citadel. Hell, Merlin hasn’t even been just another close friend – not for a long time. Precisely what Merlin is he has yet to work out, but he suspects that if Merlin dies it will become all too clear.

 

Merlin is not going to die.

 

“Arthur,” Guinevere says, at the beginning of the second week. “I know how much Merlin meant to you, to both of us— ”

 

“He’s not gone,” Arthur interrupts, voice low and hard even though he’s trying not to let his emotions show. “I won’t just accept that. Not until I see the body.”

 

“I know.” Guinevere touches his shoulder, and he remembers that Merlin is her friend, too, and feels guilty. “But you can’t keep searching for him like this. You’ll wear yourself out. Let the knights keep looking in your place.”

 

“I’ll be fine.” He resists the urge to shrug her hand away. “I have to find him, Guinevere. I need…I just need to know he’s okay.”

 

He hears her sigh, but she doesn’t protest again, watching him ride out the next morning from the castle steps with a shawl wrapped tightly around her shoulders and an expression on her face that he can’t decipher. In all honesty, he doesn’t try very hard. Dealing with other people’s emotions seems to have become entirely beyond him. He wishes Merlin were here. For all his tactless stupidity as a servant, Merlin has quite the knack for dealing with people who are upset or anxious. His mere presence is strangely soothing, at least in Arthur’s opinion, which is rather ironic given how much the man tends to irritate him.

 

But Merlin isn’t here, and although Arthur knows he should do more to comfort his wife, he doesn’t, riding out of the cold courtyard into the pale mist without looking back. He pushes away the guilt by telling himself that this mission is important and demands the whole of his concentration, and Gwaine and Leon seem to agree because neither of them speak any more than absolutely necessary throughout the journey.

 

Retracing Merlin’s steps through the woods is easy enough, even though it’s been long enough now that all tracks have been erased. Arthur has passed this way so many times in search of him that he could travel the route in his sleep, and sometimes he does, dreaming of unseen dangers and pitfalls that – in reality – never eventuate, haunted by the spectre of Merlin’s dead body staring back at him from amongst the leaves. Eventually, however, they reach the place where the signs had stopped and branch off in a new direction, this time heading towards the distant foothills in the hopes of picking up Merlin’s trail there.

 

As he rides, Arthur distracts himself with thoughts of what he will say to Merlin if – no, _when_ – they finally find him. Jokes about his sense of direction are a given, and perhaps a word of praise for having survived in the wilderness for so long alone, especially with winter coming on. Merlin will scoff, and blush, and mumble some kind of non-explanation to go with his non-apology, and Arthur will scold him for abandoning his chores, and Merlin will retort that Arthur needs the practice at looking after himself and that it’s good for him to be brought down a peg or two, to which Arthur will respond—

 

“Sire,” Gwaine says, reining in his horse abruptly. “I think I see something.”

 

Arthur’s stomach clenches as he brings his own palfrey to a stand-still. They’re half-way up a steep embankment, and Gwaine is looking down into the gully to their right with a slightly queasy expression that can mean nothing good.

 

“Down there,” he says, and Arthur follows his gaze without breathing, eyes catching on the scrap of red cloth caught on a bush protruding from the cliff. It looks like one of Merlin’s neckerchiefs. “It could be his.”

 

“Or it could be nothing,” Arthur says, but he doesn’t really believe it. The feeling in the pit of his stomach says that this can be no coincidence. “We should take a closer look.”

 

“How?” Leon asks, ever practical. “The cliff is nearly vertical.”

 

“We brought rope,” Arthur says. “The two of you can lower me down— ”

 

“Sire— ” Leon protests. Arthur overrides him, glaring.

 

“The two of you can _lower me down_ , and I’ll retrieve the fabric. Then you can help me climb back up. It can’t be too difficult.”

 

“Arthur,” says Gwaine, voice uncharacteristically subdued. “You know we can’t let you do that.”

 

Arthur rounds on him. “Why not?”

 

“Because you’re the king,” Gwaine says, unflinching. “You shouldn’t even be out here, risking your life like this. Merlin wouldn’t— he would never be able to forgive himself if anything happened to you.”

 

Arthur stares at him. It’s a low blow, and he wants to tell him as much, to say that Merlin has always been a worrywart and anyway, he is the _king_ , damn it, that ought to come with some privileges in this situation. But he knows that Gwaine is right, however much it pains him to admit it. He folds his arms across his chest. “Then what do you suggest?”

 

“I’ll do it,” Gwaine says. “If it’s Merlin’s neckerchief, I’ll know.”

 

He doesn’t say how he’ll know, and Arthur can’t help the flood of jealousy he feels at the idea that anyone else might know Merlin even partially as well as he does. He pushes it away. Some things are more important. “Very well,” he says. “Let’s do it.”

 

He lets Leon wrap the rope around a convenient outcropping while he loops it around Gwaine’s waist, tying the knot tightly so that there’s no chance the knight will slip and fall free from its embrace. He’s not about to lose another friend to the wilderness if he can help it; it would be such a senseless way to die.

 

“Be careful,” he says tersely when the rope is ready, unable to allow himself to look into Gwaine’s face for fear of what he might see. “Retrieve the fabric if you can. I want to see it.”

 

“What’s the matter, Princess – don’t you trust me?” Gwaine asks, the forced cheerfulness ringing hollow in the dampness and the mist. “I’ve seen enough of those ratty old things around Merlin’s neck to tell any one of them from a stray bit of cloth, I promise you.”

 

“It’s not that,” Arthur says, then stops. He struggles to find the right words, then finally just says, quiet, “I need to be sure, that’s all.”

 

It's enough. Gwaine subsides immediately, reaching out to grip the king’s arm.

 

“It might not even be his,” he says. “Or maybe it just blew there by mistake. Don’t worry about it, Arthur. Merlin can look after himself.”

 

“Of course he can.” Arthur shrugs him off. He doesn’t want comfort – he wants answers. “And we’re going to find him before his looking after himself gets us all into trouble. Now get going. The sooner you’re back up here, the sooner we can pitch a tent and get warm.”

 

Gwaine laughs, and then he’s over the edge, Arthur and Leon bracing themselves on the shale as best they can while he gropes for toeholds in the ragged cliff-face. The cloth is about thirty metres down, wedged between two boulders sticking out of the hillside, and it takes Gwaine several long, anxious minutes to reach it, testing each support before he lets it take his full weight. He almost slips once, sending Arthur and Leon scrambling as his weight drags them unexpectedly close to the edge, but he manages to catch himself after a few metres of free fall and his voice comes floating back up to them, bright with relief. “I’m all right! Just trying to hurry things up a bit, that’s all.”

 

“He’s mad,” Leon mutters, shaking his head. Arthur looks at him but doesn’t comment, leaning backward a little to take some of the strain off his arms.

 

At last, a shout from Gwaine tells them that he’s got it, and they can begin hauling him back up again. It’s hard work, and both Arthur and Leon are covered in sweat in spite of the chill by the time Gwaine scrambles up over the edge and back onto the path. He’s covered in grime from head to toe, his hair thick with dust and streaks of dirt marring his face, his hands scraped raw from the climb. But it’s his expression that stops Arthur short when he steps forward to unwind the rope from around Gwaine’s waist.

 

“It’s Merlin’s,” he says shortly, holding out the scrap of fabric for Arthur to inspect. There’s a dark stain spreading ominously over half the cloth, dry and stiff from its long stint on the mountainside, and Gwaine looks a little bit sick. “And there’s blood on it.”

 

 

 

They make camp in silence. After taking the neckerchief from Gwaine and inspecting it briefly, Arthur nods once and tucks it into one of his saddle-bags. Gwaine is right. The cloth belongs to Merlin, although whether the blood does as well is an open question. The fact that it was found at half-way down a sheer cliff after Merlin has been missing for days does not bode well, and it is a sober little party that unrolls the tents and pitches camp in the lee of one of the cliff faces above them.

 

After they’ve eaten and the horses have been fed and hobbled, Arthur assigns Leon the first watch and disappears into his tent with a nod to Gwaine, who doesn’t seem able to bring himself to respond. It makes Arthur feel a little guilty for his earlier ill temper; he knows Gwaine cares for Merlin, too, and will grieve with him if they find that Merlin is dead. They’ve made plans to trek down the mountain the next day and try to find the spot where someone rolling from the path would have fallen. It shouldn’t be too difficult, if Merlin’s body is there, to find it and take it home for burial. At least, it shouldn’t be difficult in a practical sense. Emotionally it will be another matter entirely.

 

Arthur lies awake for a long time that night, staring at the play of shadows the fire throws against his tent and thinking about Merlin. Funny, impossible, stupid, improbably wise Merlin, who has been with him for so long now that the thought of him being gone is incomprehensible. Merlin, who always knows the right thing to say, even if Arthur doesn’t want to hear it; whose smile lights up the room; and who is always the first one Arthur looks for whenever he’s accomplished something he feels proud of.

 

In the end, the revelation that he’s in love with Merlin is kind of an anticlimax. The feelings have always been there – it’s just a matter of naming them for what they are and acknowledging all that they could be, if given the chance. It’s not even much of a surprise, in the end, although he does feel guilty about Guinevere. She must have guessed; it would explain a lot. He has never thought of himself as the sort of man who could marry one person when he loved another, but then, Arthur has been blind to a lot of things in his life – this is just one more to add to the list.

 

Propping himself up on his elbows, he leans over and opens the saddlebag where he’d stashed the bloody neckerchief. He pulls it out, wrapping it around one hand and staring at it in the dimness.

 

“God damn it, Merlin. Where are you?”

 

He waits for a long time, but an answer never comes.

 

 

 

 

The next morning, tense and ill-rested, the little party begins the trek back down the mountain. It’s much quicker going down than it is going up, partly because of the climb but also because there is no more pausing to check for Merlin’s tracks every few hundred feet and no scanning the wooded hillside for clues. They know where they’re going, now. Still, the sombreness of it drags their feet, and none of them are in a hurry to get to the bottom. For his part, Arthur will own to no trepidation. Merlin is fine; he will be fine. They’ll find him wandering lost in the forest somewhere, and everything will be _fine_ , and the only reason he’s going so slowly is so that he doesn’t trip and fall down the mountainside and come to a bloody end before he can see it happen.

 

At midday, they break for lunch. Arthur chews on his own allotted ration of stale bread and cheese with grim determination, frowning into the middle distance. He has been keeping himself occupied by reciting an ever-growing list of chores which he plans to inflict on Merlin as punishment for getting himself good and lost and worrying them all so thoroughly, and it takes a moment before he hears Gwaine when the knight asks him a question.

 

“What?” he asks, blinking.

 

Gwaine shares a look with Leon. “I was asking whether you might not want to leave the remainder of the search to us,” he says, very carefully. This is so uncharacteristic for Gwaine that it is the only thing which keeps Arthur from snapping at him in response, reining in his temper and letting the other man finish. “As king, you must have so many duties – and we can search the woods as well as you can. Take our time about it, with your leave, sire.”

 

For a moment, Arthur allows himself to consider it. If, as he knows they all suspect, the worst turns out to be true, and Merlin is in fact lying in a broken heap at the bottom of the ridge, then in returning to Camelot he would do no harm by delaying the knowledge for a while. And if Merlin is safe and well, the knights can rescue him just as well as his king. He thinks of the duties awaiting him, the piles of documents in his chambers, of Guinevere.

 

“I am no coward, Sir Gwaine,” Arthur says finally, although he feels this is actually very far from the truth. “I won’t shrink from whatever we might find at the bottom of that cliff-face. And I will not abandon Merlin after everything he has done for me. There will be no talk of my returning to Camelot.”

 

“As you wish, my lord.”

 

Gwaine looks at him with troubled eyes, but to his credit he makes no effort to talk Arthur into changing his mind. Arthur rolls his shoulders, forcing himself to sit up straighter on his mount, to look optimistic instead of grim, and to summon up some kind of hope that Merlin is still out there, waiting for them to find him and bring him home.

 

“Come on,” he says, nudging Hengroen forward. “We must make the base before it’s dark. I don’t fancy camping on these hills overnight, if it’s all the same to you.”

 

 

 

 

They find nothing at the base of the cliff, and Arthur isn’t sure whether to be relieved or even more concerned. Surely, if Merlin had fallen, there would be some sign? Arthur is a seasoned woodsman; he knows as well as anyone what wild animals can do to a body if they’ve a mind to, but he refuses to believe that Merlin could be gone so completely, without any trace to mark his passing. He doesn’t think he could bear it if Merlin just disappeared from his life forever.

 

Gwaine seems to be thinking along similar lines. “It’s only been a few days,” he says, hope in his voice. “Surely if there had been a body here, we’d see something – blood, debris. He has to be alive.”

 

He looks at Arthur as though expecting him to challenge this declaration, but Arthur doesn’t have the heart to quash his optimism. He knows as well as Gwaine does that the chances of it being true are dwindling, but they are not defeated yet.

 

“He has to be here somewhere,” is all he says. “If he’s alive, we’ll find him.”

 

The thing is, Arthur doesn’t really see how Merlin _can_ be alive. That cliff is all but sheer, several hundred feet from the forest below. If he’d fallen, as the lost neckerchief suggested that he had, there would have been nothing to grab onto, no way to save himself. When Arthur lies down to sleep that night, he finds it difficult to drift off. More than once, he snaps himself awake to the sensation of falling, his hands outstretched and Merlin’s name on his lips, and when he drags himself out of his bedroll in the morning, he feels drained, as if he hasn’t slept at all.

 

 

 

 

In the end, they find him mostly by accident. If Gwaine hadn’t needed to take a piss and then wandered off to inspect an interesting-looking tree stump, looking for firewood, it is likely they would never have stumbled across him at all. Arthur tries not to think about that, later. Instead, he focuses on the hope he felt when Gwaine called sharply, “Arthur! You need to come and see this!” and the way he was already on his feet and running before he could think twice about it, before he could wonder whether the tone of Gwaine’s voice was joyful, or— not.

 

When he first sees the body lying curled inside the jagged stump, he stops dead, because that’s all he can think: dead. Gone, empty, over, forever. Then he sees that Gwaine is kneeling beside him, checking for injuries, something he wouldn’t do if Merlin were dead, and he can move again, crouching beside Merlin’s— beside Merlin.

 

“Is he…?”

 

“He’s alive.” Gwaine turns to him, flushed with victory. “He’s just— sleeping. It’s like he’s cursed or something, I don’t know. But he’s alive.”

 

Arthur knows it now, too; this close, he can see Merlin’s chest rise and fall beneath a blanket of fallen leaves, Merlin’s lips and cheeks still blush-pink, not the waxy blue of the dead. It’s not everything – there’s still the fact that he’s out cold to deal with, after all – but it’s so much more than they had before that Arthur can’t help a small exhalation of relief, leaning over with his hands braced on his thighs as he tries to catch his breath.

 

“Let’s get him back to camp,” he says, reaching down to catch hold of Merlin’s feet, since Gwaine is already angling for his shoulders and it really doesn’t matter who does what so long as Merlin is safe. This, however, proves easier said than done, because it transpires that Merlin is not so much covered with fallen leaves, as Arthur had originally assumed, as he is engulfed by them, and the tree stump in which he is curled is in no way willing to let him go. After a few tense minutes of futile tugging, Arthur draws his sword and begins to slice at the vines that are keeping his manservant prisoner, until Gwaine catches at his arm to stop him.

 

“Look, Arthur,” he says, pointing. For every vine Arthur divides, two more spring up in its place, flaring brilliant gold and winding ever more tightly around Merlin’s chest.

 

“Magic,” Arthur says grimly, re-sheathing Excalibur in its scabbard at his waist. “I should have guessed.”

 

He spares a moment to worry about this, for if magic is involved then it seems likely that so is Morgana. And if she has done this deliberately…if she has any inkling of how he feels for Merlin, then neither of them will ever be safe until she is defeated for good. But how could she know when Arthur himself had been ignorant of the fact until a few days ago?

 

“What should we do?” Leon asks, coming up behind them. He glances at Merlin and then away, as if the sight of magic gives him vertigo. “How do we free him?”

 

“We could try fire,” Gwaine says doubtfully. “Burn the vines before they can regrow.”

 

“Good idea. But we need to act fast, before they strangle him.”

 

Fortunately, Arthur and Leon had between them gathered sufficient firewood prior to Gwaine’s little jaunt for a small fire, and together they set about hastily coaxing it alight. Gwaine stands guard by Merlin’s head, pulling at the vines if they get too close to his throat, but otherwise not interfering for the time being.

 

“Are you done yet?” he asks tensely, after a few long minutes have passed and the makeshift fire is slowly starting to smoke. “How long can it take to start a bloody fire?

 

Arthur glances at him. He’s looking down at Merlin with an expression that Arthur recognises, if only because it’s one he’s felt on his own face a hundred times before. His hand slips on the flint and scores a shallow line across his palm instead. Hissing at the pain, he ignores Leon’s questioning expression and returns his attention to the task in front of him, feeding the fire until it begins to show a healthy orange flame.

 

“Gwaine, you start cutting the vines back – use your dagger, it’ll be safer. Leon and I will cauterise them as you go, and hopefully they won’t grow back.”

 

They begin with Merlin’s ankles, just in case, and slowly work their way up his body. The vines hiss and spark when burned, but they don’t keep growing, much to Arthur’s relief, and after a few hours of painstaking effort they have cut Merlin free enough to drag him out of the tree stump and into the open air. Even then, the removal is difficult. Once his entire body is exposed, it becomes clear that Merlin is injured and weak, his arms and legs covered in tiny marks where the vines had clung too tightly. His skin is faintly mottled in a pattern that almost matches the bark of the old oak he had been trapped inside. Arthur has the horrible feeling that if they hadn’t come along when they did, in a few more days Merlin would have been part of the tree itself, absorbed into its twisted roots like so much fertiliser. The thought makes him shudder.

 

“Merlin. Hey, Merlin, wake up.” Gwaine crouches beside Merlin’s head, gently slapping at his cheeks. Arthur holds his breath as Merlin stirs, frowning a little at first and then jerking away from Gwaine’s rough ministrations with obvious annoyance. He blinks his eyes open, and Arthur sends up a quiet prayer of thanks to whatever gods might be listening for keeping him safe.

 

“Gwaine?” Merlin slurs. “Wha’shappn—?”

 

“You were almost eaten by a magical tree,” Arthur tells him, deciding that more detailed explanations can wait for later, when Merlin is properly conscious again. “It’s all right. You’re safe now.”

 

Merlin stares at him with open incredulity, his eyes wide and impossibly blue. Arthur feels a bubble of hysterical laughter rising in his throat and pushes himself to his feet, scuffing dirt over the still-burning logs to snuff them out.

 

“Come on,” he says briskly to the others, ignoring the way his heart is thudding with fierce exultation beneath his breastbone. “Let’s get out of here.”

 

 

 

 

It’s already close to full dark by the time they return to camp, and they don’t have any firewood. Gwaine is supporting Merlin with one arm wrapped around his waist, Arthur at his other side, determined not to be outdone. The blood on Merlin’s neckerchief, it soon turns out, was from a wound to his forehead that Merlin claims he sustained when he fell down the cliff, never mind that no one could have survived a drop like that, and now that he’s upright again it is once more bleeding sluggishly.

 

Arthur and Gwaine exchange glances over his head. Either Merlin is lying, or he’s confused, and for once Arthur would almost rather it were the former, because that kind of confusion in addition to a head wound does not bode well. At least Merlin seems to be regaining some colour in his cheeks, and the bark-like texture has faded from his skin, so thoroughly that Arthur wonders whether or not he had imagined it. He still stumbles every other step and has to be forcibly bundled into a bedroll when they reach the clearing, but he’s alive and real and warm, a solid weight against Arthur’s side as he sleeps.

 

The next day, Merlin is more coherent. He explains that he had ridden out to fetch some more obscure herbs for one of Gaius’ potions, but had fallen from his horse and knocked himself unconscious. When he’d come to, the horse was gone, and he’d tried to staunch the bleeding with his neckerchief, stumbling into the battered stump for some protection against the elements with no idea – and here he slants a glance at Arthur through his lashes – that it was a magical tree that would attempt to devour him. There is something about this story which does not add up, or perhaps it’s just the way Merlin looks, shell-shocked and shaky, as if the tree had done more than just trap him there with magical vines, but Arthur doesn’t press the issue. Instead he gives Merlin a smile and a clap on the shoulder that doesn’t say anywhere near what he wants it to and makes a lot of jokes about trees.

 

Gwaine, for his part, is even more ebullient than usual now that Merlin has returned. He insists on letting Merlin ride with him, and the sound of his off-colour jokes and Merlin’s laughter chase at Arthur’s heels for the rest of the day’s journey. Gwaine had hugged Merlin that morning, spinning him around like a maiden until Merlin had laughed and begged off on the grounds that he was going to be sick. Arthur had watched the two of them together with his stomach roiling, and for the first time in his life regretted the fact that he had been born to be a king. If it weren’t for duty, and honour, and all the things holding him back, he would be the one with Merlin in his arms, not Gwaine.

 

Not that Merlin seems to mind. It’s Gwaine who looks like he can’t believe his luck, who keeps shooting covert glances at the prince as if he’s expecting to be impaled at any moment. When Arthur does nothing, says nothing, he grows bolder, his arm loose and possessive around Merlin’s waist, and Arthur turns away, his heart thick in his throat. He knows what he must do.

 

 

 

 

He waits until they’ve eaten, and when Leon and Merlin are both asleep in their respective bedrolls, Leon’s faint snoring filling the air, he sidles closer to Gwaine and broaches the topic.

 

“You love him.”

 

Gwaine doesn’t bother to deny it. He scuffs a foot in the dirt and pokes at the earth with his stick, not looking up at Arthur. “Now what would make you say a thing like that?”

 

Arthur huffs a laugh that is more like a sigh and sits down on the log beside him. “Experience.”

 

Now Gwaine looks at him, startled. “I had you down for an ostrich,” he says, sounding almost impressed. “I suppose his little vanishing act was what dragged you ass-first out of the sand, kicking and screaming?”

 

“You’re mixing your metaphors,” Arthur says. “And it was hardly kicking and screaming. I’d known for a while, I think. This was just…admitting it to myself.”

 

Gwaine makes an ironic little salute with his free hand and smiles, a little bitterly. “Well, hallelujah. The Princess finally figured out who her Prince Charming is. I concede the field to you, my lord, as the better man. Or should that be lady?”

 

Arthur shoots him a look. “Jealousy doesn’t suit you, Sir Gwaine,” he says quietly. “Any more than wilful ignorance does. Merlin would do anything for you, you know that.”

 

“ _Merlin_ would do anything for any one of his friends,” Gwaine says, poking his stick rather too vigorously into the fire. A swarm of sparks flares up, turning the night briefly hot and bright, then flaking away to ashes. “Don’t play coy, Princess. All you have to do is smile at the poor sod, and he’s ready to fling himself off a cliff for you and I don’t know what else. You know as well as I do that Merlin’s been besotted with you since day one.”

 

“And _you_ know as well as I do that it’s not that simple,” Arthur says, warning in his tone. He glares at Gwaine by the light of the campfire. “Even if I thought— even if he cares for me, I’m the king. I have a kingdom, a duty...a wife.”

 

“Poor you,” Gwaine mocks. “Born to so much privilege.”

 

“Poor me,” Arthur agrees. “Born to so much responsibility.”

 

They sit there together by the fire for a long time in silence, Gwaine occasionally stirring it with his stick, staring moodily into the flames. Finally, Arthur takes a deep breath. “Take care of him for me, won’t you?”

 

Gwaine’s head comes up, the motion sharp; startled. “What?”

 

“I said, take care of Merlin,” Arthur repeats. “God knows the idiot needs it. And I— can’t. Not now. You do understand that, don’t you? It isn’t about what I want, or even what I need. It’s about what Camelot needs.”

 

“Bullshit," Gwaine says angrily. He turns and seizes Arthur’s arm, the stick falling unheeded to the ground. “What about what Merlin needs? You’re just going to let him go on thinking he’s nothing but a servant to you? That you don’t— ”

 

“Do you think I _want_ to do this? What do you think would be in Merlin's best interests, Gwaine – to know that I love him and would give up my entire kingdom for just one— that I’d— ” He closes his eyes, takes a breath, and then says steadily, “Do you think he’d be happier knowing his love is returned but can never be consummated, or thinking it unrequited, with the possibility of eventually fading away or being overshadowed by some new love affair?” He looks pointedly at the knight. “With someone who can give him what I will never be able to give.”

 

Gwaine blows out his breath slowly. “So that’s it?” he asks. “You’re not even going to fight for him?”

 

Arthur smiles sadly.

 

“The only way to win this fight, Gwaine,” he says, his voice steady and unbending in the twilight, “is to accept that I’ve already lost.”


End file.
